Few days later I saw it clear. #Bitcoin and #Blockchain technology were going to be the biggest technological revolution since the #Internet. And I wanted to be part of this revolution.

After 24 hours I was already buying 60$ Bitcoins (Hooray!).

One week later, I was building my first mining rig.

In a Month I opened my first mining pool. It was just a pool for a small #AltCoin which I wrongly thought was going to succeed. (It did not, but anyway, I was so proud of it.)

Fast forward 4 months, I was running the largest pools of some of the biggest #AltCoins at the time, including the third one, #Peercoin.

My humble first mining rig, using some cheap plastic shelves

In just a few months (probably just days) I had become one of those fools I despised some time ago. One of those deluded people who spent #money and time on some geeky virtual thing.

My colleague and me started to create a lot of big and small #AltCoin Pools. It was a crazy year. It was fun to discover new bizarre cryptocurrencies (SexCoin Anyone?), to speak with the developers, to create the pool, advertising it… and discussing everything with my girlfriend, who clearly thought I spent too much time in front of the computer. Sadly, she is no longer my girlfriend.

It was a lot of work and it didn’t give a lot of #money, but it was my hobby and my revolution, so I kept trying to make a living out of this exciting new virtual world.

Once the #AltCoin bubble popped and that year’s madness stopped, I decided to close all the pools and keep the one I truly believed in: the Peercoin one. I like this coin since it’s one of the few innovative ones (creating the Proof-of-Stake vs BTC’s Proof-of-Work), has a great community and to some, It’s one of the real alternatives to #Bitcoin.

Nowadays I still have not achieved my goal, I still have to work for others and can’t live only from mining cryptocurrencies, creating mining pools or trading Bitcoins, but my goal is closer than ever. Never thought a hobby would make me closer to my dreams, but here we are, keeping the good work and still amazed by the blockchain technologies.

Dear Steemit friends, we are still looking at the first steps of a great technology that will change the world to a better and fairer one. This revolution is only starting, but you have to be aware of the opportunities and businesses that can be created around it (Hello #Steem!) be attentive, and don’t miss the opportunity to participate and make a difference.

Solid blog. I was about to post a similair thread. The decision to buy a coin should be based on real analysis of the coin. I found that people keep buying coins without have any knowledge of them. This is considered high risk. Personally I always use: https://www.coincheckup.com. Every single coin can be analysed here based on: the team, the product, advisors, community, the business and the business model and much more. For example: https://www.coincheckup.com/coins/Peercoin#analysis For a complete Peercoin Investment research report.

I have been mining at Ecoining since 2014 and I have to say Pau is one of the best admins I have had experience with he is honest and always does his best to fix issues and make things right when they go wrong. Ecoining is the #1 peercoin pool.